Solar Twins

by Jason F Crockett

  They learned great control over small objects by doing so and trained their sight to stay in the fourth realm where such things were possible.

  All the skills learned during that time and others similar, flooded through his mind as he sought to control the craft. He had little time, but with all their energies combined, he took hold of it and brought it safely to a shuddering halt, not a hundred meters from where they stood. Precision at such speeds and weights without proper preparation was not something easily attained so no one would blame him that it had crushed the trees and undergrowth where it now lay.

  But for the hands of his advisor, the Mwene would have collapsed where he stood. With the aid of a guard, they took him into the observatories’ night room and after many assurances that the situation was well under control, he fell into an exhausted sleep. As they were leaving, the royal medical advisor swirled in and began to scold and pamper the Mwene. He shooed everyone out of the room though they had already been heading that direction.

  Captain Gaston came out of his reverie as Brent tapped him on the shoulder. “Excuse me, Captain.”

  “Go ahead, Brent, what is it?”

  “The landing crew reports that they are ready to exit the shuttle and ask for your permission to proceed.”

  “Tell them to go ahead, and to patch their video stream back to us so we can follow along on their progress.”

  “O.K. Will do.” Brent hurried back to his console, and moments later they could see Elton (the herbalist), Nicole (the biologist), and Opie checking their equipment. They already had tested the atmosphere and knew the air was breathable, but they were bringing oxygen with them as a precaution.

  Franklin (the historian) leaned his head around the camera. “This is Franklin Bird, historian, aboard the F.L.E.N. Windfall. It is currently April 2, 2218, by Earth date and 1:07 am GMT.” As he listed off the members of the landing party and their positions, Opie was in the background pressurizing the exit chamber. They wanted no contamination aboard the ship until they knew it was absolutely safe. “So, you will not see me much,” Franklin continued, “because I will be manning the camera. O.K., here we go.”

  There was a hiss of air as the hatch swung outward and a hum as the boarding ramp stretched from the door to the planet’s surface three meters below. When the ramp reached the ground, it was supposed to stop, but it continued to hum and the ground bulged ahead of the ramp until Opie slammed his hand on the emergency override. Nicole carefully eased her way down the ramp until she was just above the ground level. The ramp bowed under her weight and more of the muck that was supposed to be solid ground oozed out from the sides of the ramp.

  The captain watched as she took a sample of the mud and shouted back up to the rest of the landing party. “It’s like we’re in the middle of a bog. We’ll never be able to walk in this. Our only option is to use the All-Terrain Rover. It has tracks and will float even if we were on a lake. Somebody’d better tell the captain though, because…” She gave a shriek and cycled her arms trying to keep her balance as the ramp slid sideways under her feet. She stepped back to brace herself and stepped off the ramp into the muck. Her leg was calf-deep in the muck before her back hit the muck with a whack. The entire shuttle twisted with a sick sucking sound and seemed to settle back on its haunches, its ramp now a meter in the air hung like the tongue of a panting dog from the hatch opening. The rest of the landing crew slid, rolled, and thumped their way to an untidy bundle of legs and arms in the corner of the compression chamber.

  The captain picked himself out of a similar bundle of screeching technicians and holding on to the edge of the rail on the instrument panels, dragged himself up to where he could see out the window. The ship that had been almost level moments before now tilted a full 20 degrees towards the back of the shuttle, lifting the nose of the shuttle even further into the air. He could barely see the ground now. “Places everyone!” he shouted at the rest of the crew still untangling themselves from the heap in the back of the cabin. The captain made his way back to his own control seat amidst the sounds of: “Get off me, you big oaf!” “That’s not me, let go.” “That gravity’s a kicker isn’t it, Nick.” But they were professionals and once they made it back to their seats and buckled in they were all no-nonsense.

  Brent ran his fingers over the COM controls and the feed from Franklin’s vid cam pushed through the static back into view. All their heads tilted as one as they tried to figure out what they were looking at. Moments later they saw a head come into view; it was Opie’s. “Nicole, are you O.K.? Don’t move. We’ll get you out.” He was looking off the opposite side of their view screen.

  “I’m fine for now, Opie, but I’m not moving till I have something solid in my hand to get me out of here.” As she finished, his head disappeared only to reappear shortly after followed by a coil of rope that snaked across the screen. A hand covered in black muck reached up and grabbed the rope dislodging a large blob that landed right on the viewfinder.

  “Brent, connect me up directly to their two-way channel,” said the captain. “I want to know what’s going on outside. We need to get the shuttle straightened out.”

  Brent’s fingers flew over the controls again. “Your mic is live, Captain. Do you want the audio in your ears or on overhead speakers?”

  “Give it to me overhead, Brent. Since we can no longer see the video feed, we all need the audio to know what’s going on.”

  There was a short squeal before they could make out what was being said.

  … “Sucking at me, but it’s not like quicksand.”

  “When you stand up, how deep do you sink?”

  “Wait, Opie, let’s get the ramp down there. It’ll go that far.”

  “Opie, this is the captain. Can you hear me?”

  “Loud and clear, Captain. We’re a little busy and distracted. What do you want?”

  “After you get out there I need you to take some sonic readings around the shuttle and assess whether we will continue to tip over more, or if we are as far over as we’ll be. We may need to try a burn to reposition ourselves if that is even possible.”

  “We’ll look into it as soon as we have Nicole in hand. Nicole, grab onto the ramp and take a step back if you can so it doesn’t land on you. Jose, get that A.T.R. out here for us. That’s the only way we’re going to get anywhere out here.

  “Captain, there’s a call coming in from the F.L.E.N. COMET. Do you want me to patch them over to you?”

  The captain gave Brent an exasperated look. “Just record it and we’ll deal with it later. We need to get this situation under control A.S.A.P or we’ll have a tough time getting anywhere or accomplishing anything.” What had started out as a well-planned and executed mission was quickly turning into a dangerous fiasco. He hated to even think about what was going on in the rest of the ship. Whatever it was that the COMET had to say would have to wait. It couldn’t be as important as what he was currently dealing with.

  Nicole watched as the ramp extended the rest of the way to the ground. It now rested in the ground almost two meters away. With an effort, she sat up using the rope to help pull her back out of the thick muck where she lay. Her eyes watered as the stench of the marsh filled her nostrils. She was now in a standing position but was thigh deep in the muck and she was still slowly sinking. Nicole watched Opie sidestep down the ramp. It was on an odd angle and he didn’t want to end up in the muck with Nicole. Elton held the other end of the rope. The extra coils lay at his feet. Opie kept one hand on the rope as he came down the ramp.

  “Opie, hurry up and get me out of here!” Nicole snapped at him almost reaching her breaking point.

  “My but aren’t you a sight, Nicole,” he responded. “I thought for a moment that your red-headed temper was buried in the mud with the rest of your hair, but I see I was wrong.”

  “Oh, I’ll show you how wrong you are,” she began, but Opie cut her off.

  “No offense intended, Nicole. We’re working on it and we’ll have you o
ut in a jiffy. Here take this pipe and shove it in the muck between your legs. Good, now take the cap off. Good. Hang on to that and keep it level with the bottom of your feet while I pull you in. It will help to release the suction you will feel when we try to drag you in. Then we’ll just be pullin’ against the muck itself. Hold still now.”

  Nicole wrapped the rope around her under her arms and held the pipe and rope in front of her as they started to pull. It wasn’t long before she was within reach of the ramp and Opie helped her to clamber up onto it. “Oh, I can’t wait to get cleaned up!” Nicole exclaimed.

  “Well,” Opie began, “we’ll let you get hosed off, but we’ve got to do some sonic readings for the captain to try to get this shuttle unstuck.” He turned and hollered up to Elton, “Elton, pass the hose on out here so we don’t bring this mess inside.”

  Elton dropped the rope and disappeared inside for a few moments before he reappeared and snaked the end of the hose down to Opie.

  “O.K., ‘Stinky,’ turn around and I’ll spray you off.”

  “At least I have a reason for being stinky!” She turned around balancing precariously on the end of the ramp.

  “Elton! Turn it on!”

  “I’m right here, Opie. No need to yell. Hold on a second.”

  By the time they were done, they both looked like drowned rats and Nicole had descended into one of her foul moods. They worked with minimal communication as they piled into the All-Terrain Rover with the sonar equipment. Franklin knelt in the back and manned a second, still-usable camera. Elton and Nicole fiddled with the equipment console as Opie drove the tracked vehicle around the shuttle.

  “Captain? Are you receiving the data stream?” Nicole asked into the microphone of her radio which was the only clean and relatively dry thing on her.”

  “We are, Nicole, but we don’t have a live video stream from Franklin to compare it with your location in relation to the ship, so we need you to tell us where you are around the ship.”

  Nicole muted her microphone for a second. “Elton, you do it. I really don’t feel like talking.”

  “No problem, Sweetheart,” he replied with a not to well-hidden grin. He then started up his running description, pausing only to answer questions when they came.

  The situation was all but hopeless. Many times, they had to reverse and rescan a given area for the captain.

  “I just don’t understand how what we are seeing could be possible, Captain,” Nick Wright said from where he watched the sonar return scribble out onto the roll of paper. “I have never seen underlying structures like these. I find it hard to conceive that these are natural and not the result of some creature’s design. It’s just not normal I tell you.”

  “Be more specific, Nick, I’m not too sure what I’m seeing so spell it out for me.” The captain tried not to let his desperation creep into his voice.

  Nick with his pale blue eyes was normally very lighthearted, and his thin jaw that normally framed a wide smile instead seemed to ripple as he absently ground his teeth in puzzlement. “It’s not an echocardiogram, Captain. It’s not supposed to have spikes like it’s the pulse of the planet or something. There should be obvious layers and varying thicknesses. What I see is more like pudding with needles in it than a sheet of multi-layered plywood. And every single needle is uniform in length and diameter, and is perfectly vertical.”

  Opie’s voice cut through their dialogue. “Captain, the lower two thruster bodies are 100% covered in this muck. The shuttle appears to still be sinking at a constant rate too, and I would estimate that the upper level of thrusters would be covered by day’s end. We are going to venture towards the foothills to see how far the swamp continues.”

  “O.K., Opie. Make it quick will you because if the stern is sinking that quickly, it’s also only a matter of time before the main entryway is also buried and then we’ll be virtually trapped in this big ol’ can.”

  The captain turned to Brent before Opie’s expletives were through, “Brent, I need you to round up Caleb Caldvel and Jerry Abraham and get them up here on the double.” He stopped and surveyed the crew. “If any of you are following my train of thought, you are already seeing that we will soon be, quite literally, in over our heads.” He could see the worry etched in their faces, an echo of his own concern. “However, we’re going to tackle this like we do everything. Let’s keep this under wraps until I have a chance to inform everyone in my own time. We’ll work together as a team and next week we’ll be laughing about it. Now we all have jobs to do. Let’s just focus on doing our own jobs and doing them well.”

  Caleb and Jerry arrived at the same time, their faces excited and expectant. Jerry’s expression changed immediately as he took in the seriousness of the crew. Caleb was harder to read since his personality was much more “even-keeled” than Jerry’s.

  “Thanks for coming so quickly, gentlemen,” the captain began. “We have the makings for one difficult month ahead of ourselves if you don’t have the solutions that I hope you have.”

  He watched as they exchanged glances and then he began to fill them in on the current situation. Just as he finished and stretched back in his chair he asked, “So what do you think?” Opie’s voice broke through thick static on the speakers.

  “Captain? Are you still receiving our transmissions?”

  Nick jumped to the mic not waiting for the captain to reply. “We’re still reading you, but the sonar is a bit broken up and difficult to read. Can you confirm that you are now over solid ground?”

  “Yes, we can. It’s solid from here on towards the mountains. I estimate that we are about 1,500 meters from the shuttle which sits almost dead center in the muck which has got to be at least 2 kilometers wide and 3-4 kilometers long.”

  At this point the captain spoke out, his arms waving animatedly as though Opie was directly in front of him. “How does it look as far as a base camp or possible new base location for our settlement?”

  “I don’t see any reason this would not work for our base camp, but I think we’ll want to survey some more to find the ideal place to settle down. The muck effectively cuts off most access to the ocean from here except for through the river further South, or perhaps around the North, depending on how a good ol’ fashioned magnetic compass will read.”

  “Well,” began the captain, “set up a beacon there and we will plan on that being our intermediate base camp for now. Make it close to the river so we’ll have water, mind you. Then continue around the muck (as you so technically call it) and map out its size so that we can determine where to build our settlement.”

  “O.K., will do, Captain. Anything else?”

  “Just keep checking back in so that we can follow your progress. If you come across any place that would make a good settlement, put a beacon there and when you’re done with the whole survey, we’ll see where will be best.”

  “We’re on our way, and our COM is on if you need us back there for any reason.”

  The captain turned back to Caleb and Jerry regarding each in turn. His steel gray eyes gave away nothing that was going through his mind. “Well, gentlemen, you know pretty much everything now. This is what I need. I need you, Jerry, to head out to the first beacon with your crew and I need you to lay out the camp and get temporary shelter set up, latrines and such taken care of. You may utilize the settlers as they arrive. This is where you come in, Caleb. I need you to make the best use possible of the vehicles that we have at our disposal. Keep in mind what you’ll be driving through so that we don’t get our people stranded between here and there. I’m sure you already know who drives well and who doesn’t. I don’t need to know all the details; I just need it to get done. If there’s any way to get the other vehicles there in the process, that would be appreciated. Do you have any questions?”

  Caleb spoke up first, his dark eyes seeming to embrace the challenge. “What’s the time frame, Captain? How long have we got?”

  “Nick, you’ve been analyzing the terrain, what do y
ou estimate is our time frame.”

  Nick thumbed the stubble on his thin jaw as he thought. “Much depends on the strength of the remaining pins that are in the muck, holding us up. If all were to go our way, the shuttle would rest on a few simultaneously and our sink rate could all but stop. However, if the shuttle encounters them one at a time, or if their structure is already fractured from our impact, we could be looking at mere hours before the lower hatch is inaccessible.”

  The captain said, “In other words, what it sounds like is that anything large needs to be removed immediately. Once all the larger vehicles are out, we could use the smaller upper hatch if necessary. But our people are what are most important. Caleb, I want all the people off this shuttle by the end of the day. We aren’t too sure how long the day will last, but if we have to work with lights to keep going, that’s what we’ll do.”

  “Well, we’d better get moving then,” said Jerry. “With a timeline like that, there’s no time to lose. Caleb, I can take some of those larger vehicles off your hand. Whatever you don’t need to move people and will not sink in the muck, I’ll take. It will make my job a whole lot easier in the long run to have that equipment available to me especially as we begin building the real settlement.”

  They walked quickly to the entryway animatedly discussing how to accomplish the impossible. The captain watched as they left, knowing they would do the best they could and knowing too, that without a miracle, their best wouldn’t get them out of the predicament they were in. The mood in the cabin was subdued. Captain Gaston could feel the eyes of his crew watching him as he made his way up to the window. He could still see barely anything of the ground from the windows in the front. Just in view off to the “East” he could see the hills climbing up towards the mountains in the far distance. The whole thing was a disaster. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been, granted, but still…